In 1974-75 I was attending a Airframe & Powerplant mechanics' course as a preliminary to getting an aviation flight engineer's cert for a cargo airline that was paying the chunk of my tuition not covered by the GI Bill. Our chief instructor was a retired Maintenance Director for Braniff, who went back quite a ways with the company, holding Braniff Airlines Company ID card #4. There were photos of him as a young mechanic working on biplanes on a dirtstrip field, I figured out one of the pics showed a Curtis Jenny, and the lanky pilot in the leather overcoat seemed kind of familiar, so I asked, and was told, *Oh, that's Charlie Lindbergh, back when he was flying mail...*
Braniff had put the first 747 into revenue service; nicknamed Fat Albert [also *the great pumpkin*- it was orange] by Braniff flight and maint crews, and we got to talking about the things one day. It turns out they're not that much of a bear to handle, being fitted with yaw dampeners and a few other goodies that made even that huge an aircraft a reasonable enough task. So, I asked, can you roll one?
They had a longer-range version called the 747SP, flying transoceanic flights to South Africa from New York and to Australia from LAX. I don't think Braniff was running one, but Quantas and SAA had a couple. I was told one of them had been rolled during their acceptance flight, but I've never seen it done. But I wouldn't be surprised; not a bit. Fat Albert was sitting in an airplane dead storage yard in New Mexico a decade or so back, probably to never fly again. The 747SPs aren't economical to run any more [MUCH shorter than a 747-400] but I think a couple dozen of them are still up and flying.
